Union Church is located a few miles northwest of Greensboro, MD. A grave marker still stands a few yards from the church door. The name on the stone is faded but still legible:

CORPL
Wm. H. Carney
Co I
38 U.S. C.I.

No date of birth or death is shown.

Corporal William H. Carney, Company I, US Colored Infantry

Cpl Carney is listed in rosters of the 38th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops. The 38th Regiment was formed in January 1864 near Norfolk, VA and saw hard fighting in these battles around Richmond during September-October 1864:

Chaffin’s Farm

New Market Heights

Deep Bottom

Fair Oaks

One narrative of the Battle of New Market Heights describes the fortitude and heroism of non-commissioned officers of the 38th USCT such as Cpl Carney. Casualty totals for these regiments at the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm also tell of courage and heroism.

From all engagements in 1864 and 1865, the 38th USCT lost

1 officer and 42 enlisted men killed and mortally wounded

2 officers and 192 enlisted men lost to disease.

Total deaths: 237

After the surrender of Confederate armies in Virginia and North Carolina, the 38th USCT was deployed to Texas to counter France’s military intervention in Mexico. The regiment served at Brownsville, at various points on the Rio Grande, and at Brazos Santiago, Indianola, and Galveston until January 1867. Cpl Carney and his black comrades were mustered out on January 25, 1867.

Civil War veteran William H. Carney of Goldsboro, MD

A search of Denton Journal articles from 1865 produced a few details about Caroline County’s black Civil War veteran. In 1893, William H. Carney was listed among the Civil War veterans in Caroline County who were still receiving veterans’ pensions. In March 1895, Carney sought damages from the county when his horse fell through the roadway of the county-maintained bridge between Goldsboro and Bridgetown, DE.

In West Denton … there were two blacksmith Shops serving the farmers and residents of the area. One was operated by a Negro named Walter Moore … I doubt if any kingdom ever fell because Walter’s nails came loose.

What does the map look like closer to home? Zoom in here and look around:

Zoomed out, it looks like a population density map. Like a census map but with a bias toward showing population segments more likely to be engaged with social media:

Zooming in, we see other patterns and try to understand their meaning. Near Denton, the local hotspots for tweeters are North Caroline High School (upper left) and McDonald’s near MD 404 (lower right). The NCHS hotspot is easy to interprist: a population more likely to be active in social media:

But why are tweets coming from farm fields? Tractor and harvester operators are tweeting while they plow furrows or harvest soybeans?

And why are all these tweets coming from the middle of the Choptank River and from the marshes north of Denton and the MD 404 bridge? Waterfowl hunters? Seems unlikely. Bad geolocations in the Twitter data are always possible. But why scattered here?

And, of course, you have to wonder about all those tweets along Routes 404 and 50. Those just passengers tweeting, right? Can’t be drivers !

As many as four or five two- and three-mast sailing vessels at a time were often tied up at the Denton wharves. I often had the job of leading the mule forward to lift the bag out of the vessel’s hold, and backing him up again to drop the bag onto the wharf and to lower the tongs back into the hold for another bag. You get the picture – the mule and the boy – back and forth all day until the last bag was out of the hold.

These studies were funded by the Maryland Historical Trust. They identify many types of historic sites and structures, including:

towns

landings

wharves

warehouses

canneries, and

sunken vessels

Since the inventories were published, Choptank River Heritage (CRH) continues the work of OHTMC by publishing historic maps, site descriptions, and stories of people and places of the Choptank River watershed.